Chapter III (5)

June 3.--Father Malloy has left with the design of making representations to the government about the condition of things here. He intended, if his bishop consented, to go direct to Montreal, and speak to the ministers themselves. The forwarding of emigrants passed as healthy has begun. They are crowded on to the steamers until there is barely room to move. The reason for this is, the passage money is a dollar a-head and the more packed on board, the more profit. Truth to tell, this class of emigrants are eager enough to leave, and get away from this place. The meanness of the Canadian government in dealing with them is shameful. Instead of allowing healthy passengers to go on with the ship as at first, they are now landed. Being compelled to land and stay here by the government’s orders, it would be reasonable to expect the government would provide for them. It does not; all it has done is to send an agent who offers to sell them provisions at cost. Uncle’s recovery is hopeless; his strength has gone.

5.--Poor uncle is dead. He was buried yesterday. Ellen keeps hovering between life and death; she has youth on her side. Poor Bridget is worn to a shadow, waiting on the sick. Being told a ship that came in this forenoon was from Sligo, I watched a chance to get on board, expecting to find some I knew among her passengers. I found her deck crowded with emigrants, watching the sailors fish up from the hold with boat-hooks the bodies of those who had died since entering the river. I soon learned there was bad blood between the crew and passengers, all of whom who could do so had left the steerage two days before and lived on deck. The hold had grown so loathsome with the warm weather that it became unbearable. The crew resented their living on deck. The captain stood at the poop rail, and proved to be a civil man. He told me he had done his best for the passengers on the voyage, but the charterers had poorly provisioned the vessel and he could not therefore give them the rations he wished. For the bad feeling between the sailors and passengers he could not blame either. Staying on deck the emigrants were in the sailors’ way, yet he could not order them back to the hold. Three sailors had caught the fever during the week, which incensed their comrades against the emigrants. He was to pay the sailors a sovereign for each body brought up. I told him of Captain Christian of the ship Sisters, who, the week before, when emigrants and sailors refused for any money to go into the hold to bring up the dead, went down himself and carried them to the deck on his shoulders. I hope he may live to know that Irishmen are grateful, for he is now down with the fever. I recognized none of the passengers, for they were from the northwest end of Lord Palmerston’s estates. Their poverty was extreme. They had no luggage and many had not rags enough to cover their nakedness. So haggard and white were they, so vacant their expression, that they looked more like an array of spectres, than of human beings. Coming back, I had painful evidence of the brutal indifference of the authorities in dealing with the sick. They continue to be brought from the ships to the quay in rowboats, and the line of ships being now two miles long, the journey is a long one, and often fatal in bad weather. A small steamboat for transferring them would be a godsend, but the government does not get one, does not even spend ten shillings to replace the broken planks of the steps on the quay, although the want of them causes many a feeble one to slip into the river.

6.--Dr Douglas exemplifies how a man may be estimable as an individual yet unequal for his duties as an official. He is so obliging and gracious personally that it is unpleasant to find fault with him, yet it is apparent he does not grasp the magnitude of the affliction he has to deal with and is unable to devise means to meet it. All the steps taken are ridiculous in their petty nature. I have been told that it is not him but the Canadian government that is to blame, that it will not allow him a free hand in meeting the emergency, does not respond to his calls, and warns him to be careful in incurring expenditure. Probably that is true, but the government is not accountable for the foolish rules by which the island is governed. There is now a large colony of supposed healthy emigrants confined to the northwest corner of the island. When one falls sick, instead of being taken to the fever-sheds, he is conveyed to the ship in which he was a passenger, and from her is taken to the sheds. The delay and the fatigue of the journey by land and water, if it does not kill the patient makes his recovery more doubtful. Although the population of the island has doubled in a few weeks, the boat with supplies from Quebec continues to come once a week only. We may be starving, many are starving this day, yet until the steamer comes there is no help. The dead are being buried in trenches, three tier deep. Men and women whose strong arms would add to Canada’s wealth are being held here by its authorities to die of want when within sight of plenty. I look at the row of farm-houses on the opposite bank of the river, on the little town whose roofs I see, and knowing there is comfort and plenty over there, marvel at the stupidity, the criminal disregard, that leaves us without bread to eat or even straw to die upon. Steamers pass daily but they are not allowed to stop at the island; my poor people are kept prisoners to perish amid the rocks of this island. The Almighty will surely have a day of reckoning with the rulers of Canada, for it is Canada’s territory we are on and it is Canada’s quarantine in which we lie bound. The sick are everywhere and are neglected. I found the body of a man in a thicket where he had crawled like a scared beast to die in peace. Bodies are taken from the tents daily where the healthy are supposed to lodge. The sheds have become repugnant to every sense, and the sick are worse off than on ship, for few have relatives to attend them, and they lie for hours without being helped even to a drink of water. The inmates of a tent told me nobody had been near them for two days, and not one among them able to stand for a minute. Everything is against us, for the weather is windy and wet. I go to spend the night in the old shed. My brain is overburdened with the sorrows of my people, and I would I were at rest with Aileen.

10.--A steamer came in this morning to take away emigrants, and I am sure over a thousand were packed on board. Her purser brought a package of letters; one of them was for myself.

Montreal, June 8, 1847.

My Dear Gerald,--I had it in mind to have written you several days
ago, but postponed taking pen in hand day after day in expectation
of being able to convey to you the intelligence that would cheer
your heart--that the government had decided on adopting a policy
of adequate relief. That, it grieves me to say, they have not
done, although I have exerted myself to arouse them to a sense
of their duty, but it is little a poor priest can do with our
public men. When I reached here I went first to see the premier.
After waiting my turn for an hour with a crowd of visitors, I was
admitted. He was civil, but is a dull man, and did not seem to
realize what I was telling him. He told me to go to the provincial
secretary, to whose department emigration belongs, and see him. I
left in no good humor, to do as Mr Sherwood bade me. Mr Daly was
not at his lodgings; he had gone to the back of the mountain to
dine. I have learned since, he is better at dining and wining than
attending to his duties. I had an interview with him next day.
You may not know that Mr Daly is of ourselves. He is a Galway man
himself and his lady is from Kilkenny. Appealing to an Irishman
and a Catholic I expected him to fall in with me--that all I had
to do, was to seize him of the actual facts of the situation at
Grosse isle and he would act with energy. That was what I expected
of him but all I got from him, Gerald, was soft words and
promises, and neither the one nor the other will feed the starving
or cure the sick. He told me to call next day, as he wanted time
to go over the reports. When I went, his servant man said he was
out, and I never found him in again for me. When the house opened,
I managed to get in, to hear what the governor would say about the
emigrants. The words put in his mouth about them made me angry.
The government pretended they had made ample preparation for the
expected influx and that everything was going on well. Beside him
stood two men smiling among a bevy of ladies who knew better,
for I had told them all. In the debate since then, when a member
on the opposition side referred to the rumors of the state of
matters at quarantine, Mr Daly begged the house not to give heed
to alarmist reports and to rest assured the government was doing
everything that was required, had appointed a commission of three
doctors to visit Grosse isle, and would act on their report. I
had little respect before for Canadian politicians, I have less
now. I was advised to wait on the new minister, John A. Macdonald,
the youngest member of the government. I told my friend that if
Mr Daly would not do the decent thing by his countrymen, I was
not going to ask the member for the Orange city of Kingston, who,
like all the others of them, is engrossed in intrigues to keep his
party in office. The talk of the city is whether the ministry
will stand, for its majority is only one or two, and there is a
good deal of excitement about it. More attention is being paid to
the ribaldry of The Pilot than anything else. This will not be for
long. The evil has come to the door of this city. The forwarding
by wholesale of all emigrants able to move, has brought the fever.
The emigration sheds are at Windmill point, an inconvenient place,
for there is not water enough to permit the steamers to come up
to the wharf, and the emigrants have to be landed by scows, which
is sore on the sick. I am not going to say that the journey from
Grosse isle to here is as bad as the voyage across the Atlantic,
but it has a few features worse than it. The steamers come in
with emigrants packed on their lower deck like herrings in a
fish-box. The steamers are chartered by the government from their
supporters, and a few of them are old, worn-out tubs, that take
two days to a trip that ought to be made inside 20 hours. Without
food or cover, blistered by the sun in the day and chilled by the
river breezes at night, the poor creatures are landed here more
dead than alive. Many who went aboard feeling well, are carried
off in a dying state. My curse and the curse of every Irishman be
on the government that allows the helplessness of our countrymen
to be traded upon to make money for their followers. If their
transportation was left open to all ship-owners, the emigrants
would be brought here in large and speedy steamers, and a limit
could be put to the number they carry. Once landed, the emigrants
are decently treated. I am thankful to be able to say that. It
is the city and not the government that manages. For sick and
well there is plenty of wholesome food, and no lack of doctors
or nurses. The food, to be sure, is coarse and the cooking not
good, but you know the saying, The poor drink wather and the rich
sip tay. After Grosse isle it is fine. What I have seen here has
shown me the necessity of moving the quarantine to the flats below
Quebec. If the sick were moved from Grosse isle to near the city
they would get all the supplies and service needed. I expect to
return to Quebec in a day or so, and before leaving here hope
to get the bishop to wait on the premier, to ask that the new
fever sheds be placed on the outskirts of Quebec. I hear from the
emigrants as they arrive of you, and as they speak they bless you.
I hope to see you soon.

YOUR OLD PRECEPTOR.

12.--A ship that came in from Sligo has many of my old neighbors. They say after we left, the agents gave out that all who refused to emigrate would have the relief taken from them, which was all they had to keep life in them until next crop. The more that went, the more eager were those left behind to go. At the rate they are coming, Lord Palmerston will have his land clear of people by Michaelmas, and be able to lease it to Scotch cow-feeders. Most of the emigrants come expecting free land from the Canadian government and a pound a-head from the agents of their landlords at Quebec. Oh, the deceivers, to cheat these poor people with lies!

16.--Bridget is down with the fever, just when Ellen was recovering and likely to be able soon to leave with her sister for uncle’s farm in Huntingdon. It seems as if exposure, if long enough continued, is sure to induce the disease. Doctor Douglas says few can withstand breathing the air of the sheds for a fortnight without being laid down. I expect my turn will come yet. A company of soldiers has arrived to act as a guard over the camp of what is called the healthy emigrants to keep them from going near the fever sheds. It is of a piece with everything else. The fever is in the camp as well as in the sheds. Had they sent a few hundred boards from Quebec to floor the tents, it would have been more sensible than to supply a guard. The weather is still wet, and the ground under the tents is soaking, yet the people have nowhere else to lie. I was telling the head of the Church of England clergymen, Doctor Mountain, of what my friend had said about quarantine being moved near the city. He agreed it ought to be done, although the people of Quebec would resist. The cellar of the marine hospital having become full to overflowing with emigrants, workmen came three days ago to erect sheds on the hospital grounds. The people of St Rochs assembled, scattered the lumber, and drove away the workmen. Lamenting the lack of nurses, he told me it was partly due to the government’s not offering sufficient wages. Placards on the Quebec streets asking for nurses at 60 cents a day met with no response. Doctors were offered only $3.50 a day. A dollar a day for nurses and $5 for doctors would get a supply, but the authorities would not consent. I can believe anything of them. They will not send us a supply of straw, even, and many of the sick are lying without anything below them.

18.--I was witness today of an incident I want to preserve some note of. I was attending to an old neighbor, Mr Monaghan, who came in the ship from Sligo six days ago. He is mending, though still poorly. While bending over him, he gave a start, and turning I saw they were carrying in a new patient. They placed him in an adjoining bed. Wasted and sallow as he was, I recognized in him a man I had seen from boyhood, but had never spoken to. He had a farm in our townland and was a bitter Orangeman. With Monaghan he had a feud, which they tried to fight out on many a market day. Stanhope had led a party that beat his oldest son and four other boys nigh to death one St John’s eve, and had heaped insult on him and his times without count. I will not say Monaghan did not pay him back. If he did not, somebody else did, for he had his stackyard twice burned and one fine morning found four of his cows houghed. How would these mortal enemies meet now, far from their native land and laid side by side in deathly sickness? Stanhope was overcome with the fatigue of bringing him from the ship, and lay exhausted with his eyes shut. I held up his head to give him some cordial, and then he sank back and fell asleep. I kept my eye on him as I went about the shed, watching his waking. On Dr Mountain’s coming in, I told him of the new Protestant patient and of the circumstances I have here set down. We went to where the couple lay and were looking at them when Stanhope awoke. He gazed helplessly around until his eyes met those of Monaghan, which had been fixed on him from the time he came in. The glitter of the old fire sprung up in Stanhope’s eyes and a flush passed over his white face. Neither said a word for quite a while. During the pause the defiant look faded from Stanhope’s face, and I could see recollection of old neighborhood and a sense of community of suffering filled his bosom. The stern, hard features relaxed and a bony hand was thrust across.

“Is that yersilf, Monaghan; will ye shak hans wid me?”

“Glad an proud to do that same, and let bygones be bygones, Mr Stanhope.”

There was a moistness in Dr Mountain’s eyes as he said, “Love is the fulfilling of the law. May the Good Shepherd, who has sheep in every flock, bless you both, and in His own time gather you into His heavenly fold.”

“Amen,” I said with all my heart. “Dr Mountain, I have learned something in this island of horrors--that goodness is not bounded by creed, for I have seen you and your clergy nurse the sick and feed the hungry day after day although not one in a score of them are of your church. The thanks that have been in my heart for your kindness to my countrymen I am not ashamed now to speak.”

He clasped my hand. “My dear Mr Keegan, say not another word; when a man comes to die the most painful reflection he can have is, that he did not embrace every opportunity he had during his lifetime of doing good. You and I have simply done our duty, and, after all, have to confess we are unprofitable servants of the one God whom we worship at different altars.” Having said this he turned away to resume his visitation of the sick elsewhere.

26.--The weather has been steaming hot for a week, with heavy showers, and fog at night, making our situation worse and spreading infection. There is a stench both in and out of doors. Ships continue to come in and the number of sick to grow; a doctor told me there are over 2000. The nurses, both men and women, that come from Quebec, are a bad lot. They neglect their duties, smuggle in drink to those of the sick who can pay for it, and rob the dying. On this lone island, where everything else is so scarce, whisky can be got by whoever wants it. The greed of gain overcomes the fear of infection, and it is smuggled in by small boats from Quebec. Last night there was an uproar in the camp of the healthy, caused by drunkenness. The military guard is a hurt to the emigrants. Like soldiers everywhere, they have neither morals nor decency. Bridget grows worse and poor Ellen is making a bad recovery, for she exhausts her strength by trying to nurse her sister. Monaghan and Stanhope talk by the hour, and their converse has put new heart in them. Hope is better than medicine. Indeed, I have seen scores die from despondency or indifference to life, who, to all appearance, ought to have recovered. The two old enemies are the most cordial of friends and will soon be able to leave. They have agreed to go with the survivors of their families to the London district and take up land together. Both are industrious and steady and having buried their senseless hatred will be of mutual help to one another. Both have money enough to start them.

24.--Father Moylan has got back for a few days. There is need for more like him, but Irish priests are few in this part of Canada, and our people want them alone. The ships now arriving report larger mortality than those that came in May. This is due to the heat. The condition of the holds of the ships that come in is unspeakably revolting. Several buried over a hundred in the ocean, equal to a fifth of the number of their passengers.

July 2.--Father Moylan wanted me to go to Montreal as a witness before a committee of enquiry appointed by the legislature. I have no heart to leave here, and I told him if they would not believe him they would not believe me. There is no improvement in caring for the sick; the callousness of the Canadian government to the sufferings of God’s poor on this island I cannot understand. The weather is now settled, and beyond the sun being scorchingly hot at midday is as fine as could be wished.

9th.--This evening I took a walk to the far side of the island and enjoyed the solitude and the peace of nature. Sitting on the beach, I watched the sun sink behind the hills. I have a feeling that my own sun will soon disappear, for I am sad and disheartened beyond all my experience. Dr Fenwick told me the other day I should leave; that I needed a change. I cannot, indeed I will not, for I cherish the secret wish to die where my Aileen left me. A ship has arrived with 31 dead on board; she lost over a fourth of those who embarked on her at Liverpool. Another out of 470 emigrants, dropped 150 into the Atlantic. Sure, tragedies like these ought to direct the eyes of the civilized world to what is happening. My heart is broken at the sight of thousands of my own dear people, men, women, and little children, dying for lack of a crust on Canada’s shore.

14.--I think the end has come. Tonight my head throbs and my bones are sore. Bridget, after hovering a long while between life and death, sank to rest this morning, and is buried. Ellen leaves by tomorrow’s steamer, and will be in Huntingdon in a few days. I gave her a message to uncle. My life has been a failure. May God have pity on me and on my poor people. Oh, that Aileen were here; that I felt her hand on my racked forehead.

THE END.

NOTE TO THE SUMMER OF SORROW.

The immigration to Canada in 1847 was the largest on record. During the season of navigation vessels hearing 90,000 arrived in the St Lawrence. Of these 20,000 were English, Scotch, and Germans, and on the vessels that carried them there was no unusual sickness, so that, in considering the calamity of 1847, they are to be set aside, and the remaining seventy thousand alone to be dealt with. They were mainly Irish Roman Catholics, and it was among them that disease and death reigned. Fifty thousand of them sailed from ports in Ireland; twenty thousand came by way of Liverpool. 129 ships were required to carry them. On every vessel fever and dysentery broke out; the emigrants who sailed from Liverpool faring worst. In crossing the Atlantic these 129 vessels dropped 4092 of their passengers into the deep; while anchored off Grosse isle 1190 died on board; out of those they sent ashore upon the island 3389 perished. A monument in its cemetery records that there was buried, in less than six months, 5424 persons “who, flying from pestilence and famine in Ireland, found in America but a grave.” That, however, is only a portion of the mortality. Streaming past Grosse isle, after a detention that was harmful to them and of no benefit in protecting the Canadian community against disease, the advancing army of immigrants swept westward, and wherever it bivouaced, left a cluster of graves. At Quebec city 712 died, at Montreal 6330, at Lachine 130, at Cornwall 52, at Kingston 1900, at Toronto 863. Only where the authorities prepared places of shelter, was any record kept of the deaths, and these places closed in October. Of the mortality during the winter no count was kept nor of the hundreds who died by twos or threes along the routes of travel or in remote country districts, to which the sorely smitten people penetrated in the hope of relief. The official record gives the total at 17,000; actually, about 20,000 died. Adding those who died on shipboard, the number rises to 24,000. That is, out of every fourteen who left Ireland, five died--a rate of mortality without parallel in modern times. For this appalling destruction of human life, the Irish landlords were primarily responsible in compelling or inducing their tenants to leave Ireland without making adequate provision for their sustenance. For their treatment on shipboard, the owners, or charterers of the vessels, and the officers in command are accountable. It is humiliating to state that no effort was made by the officials at Quebec to punish the captains and mates of vessels who had maltreated passengers. It was notorious that the poor emigrant had been robbed in measuring out his scanty allowance of biscuit, meal, and water, and that the quality was detestable, yet there is only one case on record of a captain being brought to account. The master of the Birnam was charged with cheating in the allowance of water. By confessing judgment and paying a paltry fine, he avoided trial and went free! No class of men more abuse the power their position gives them than the officers of ships. The emigrant has always been badly treated; is to this day shamefully used. Steam has shortened the voyage and made it more bearable, while government requirements as to space and accommodation are more liberal, but there are steamships which come to Quebec whose passengers tell of their voyage being an ordeal of starvation and neglect--of petty tyranny on the part of hectoring ship-officers, of food being thrown before them of such execrable quality and so badly cooked as to turn the stoutest stomach. Desirous of hurrying to their destination and knowing their inability to contend with powerful companies, the grievances of the poverty-stricken and friendless immigrant are unrecorded in our courts.

For the tragedy enacted at Grosse isle in 1847, and its sad scenes re-enacted in every town and city west of it, from Quebec to Sandwich, the Canadian government is accountable, and the responsibility for the death of the twenty thousand laid in premature graves lies at the door of Sherwood and his ministers. The letters and reports of Dr Douglas show they were fully acquainted with the awful state of affairs at Grosse isle from the landing of the first sick emigrants, yet took no adequate steps in response. There never was a calamity that could have been more easily averted; there never was waste of life that could have been more easily prevented. The British government did its part. Communication was slow then, and it was past the middle of June before accounts of the dreadful state of matters at Grosse isle reached Britain. On the 18th, the Imperial government sent a despatch asking the Canadian authorities to take vigorous action to relieve it and promising to pay the cost. On receipt of this despatch, the Canadian government became lavish enough, and the following year presented a bill for some $700,000, which the Imperial authorities paid without enquiry. Where that money went, it is useless now to enquire; assuredly little of it went to feed the famishing immigrant. The efficiency of the action of the government can be judged by one fact--it was not until the end of August it had provided sufficient sheds for the sick at Grosse isle to permit of the sexes being separated. While no Canadian can look back upon 1847 without a feeling of shame for the conduct of our public men, they entertain an honest pride in the devotion of the clergy and physicians. Thus, out of 42 Roman Catholic priests who volunteered to visit Grosse isle 19 caught the fever, and 4 died. Out of the 16 Episcopal clergymen who responded to the call of Bishop Mountain, 7 took ill and 2 died. Of the 26 doctors, 22 fell ill and 4 died. The same devotion was shown elsewhere, doctors, nurses, and ministers, in the hope of doing good to the sick and dying, walking into danger. One clergyman associated with this district, Rev Wm. Dawes, died from the fever at St Johns. The mayor of Montreal, J. T. Mills, after doing invaluable work in providing for the sick, caught the contagion and died.